Crash car flew for 31 metres in the air across golf course

Georgina Hockey, 19, said her car had taken off like a plane when she spoke to police after the crash, in which she and her passenger, one of her best friends, were injured.

Miss Hockey, of Courtil Tresor, La Vielle Rue, St Sampson’s, admitted driving without due care and attention at Mont Cuet Road, Vale. She was fined £400 and banned from driving for six months.

Law Officers’ liaison Nigel Burnard told the court that Miss Hockey had been driving a Mercedes from the direction of the landfill site towards the junction with L’Ancresse Road shortly before midnight.

On the sweeping left hand bend just before the junction the car left the road. A police accident investigator found later that after hitting the kerb, it had travelled 67 metres across one of the fairways before it hit an earth bank and was launched into the air.

It was airborne for 31 metres and it went for a further 39 metres on landing before coming to rest on another fairway. The investigator estimated that the car had been travelling at 47mph when it hit the bank.

The car was extensively damaged and Miss Hockey and her passenger were both injured. She suffered one broken vertebrae while he broke two.

Miss Hockey said in interview that she was unfamiliar with the road. She had not seen the bend and the vehicle’s headlights had been on dip.

When the car began to drift across the road she just ‘froze’. Once off the road the car had taken off like a plane. She accepted travelling at more than the 35mph speed limit.

Miss Hockey told the court that she had been back to that section of road since the crash to break her fear of it.

‘I just froze [during the crash],’ she said. ‘I took my hands off the steering wheel and didn’t brake or anything.’

She and her passenger had been in hospital for a week and both had had to wear back braces for six weeks.

‘I feel horrible for putting one of best friends through that,’ she said.

Judge Cherry McMillen said Miss Hockey got credit not only for her guilty plea, but for the fact that she had been fully truthful and had fully acknowledged her responsibility. She had been driving for two years without previous conviction which showed she was not somebody who made a habit of driving madly around the island.

‘It was a life lesson hard learnt,’ said Judge McMillen. ‘The potential for harm was great. The whole thing sounds quite lengthy and quite dreadful and I have to acknowledge that.’